bull whip cracking and whipmaking by Louie

Something I’ve done in the past and occasionally do now when making a bullwhip is glue the layers together. I’m not using glue on the entire bullwhip, simply the non plaited layers on the handle. I do this using a Leather Cement:

It’s pretty easy to do I simply put some on the part of the core that touches the handle foundation, then tightly bind them together with artificial sinew. I repeat this with all non plaited layers of the whip. What that does in theory is if the artificial sinew were to ever breakdown hopefully the glue will keep the whip from twisting on the handle.

Is this a realistic concern?

Probably not. The artificial sinew on the handle doesn’t really take any stress, so it’s not going to break from that. And it degrading over time really isn’t a concern.

So why do I do it?

I’m not sure and I pretty much only do it on cow leather whips. My reasoning is that typically they have a slightly different construction than my kangaroo whips and there is 1-2 less layers on the handle tied down, so less force compressing it on to the handle. Also with cowhide generally being thicker the bindings on the outside of a layer of cowhide doesn’t necessarily translate to as much force on the inside as it would with kangaroo.